On 2001-01-09, Open Market attacked Intershop, the largest Germany-based shopping application company, for violating its patents on a network sales system on the US market. Meanwhile the patent applications of OpenMarket are looming around at the EPO waiting to be granted.

• News Reports
• Abstract
• Prior art
• Situation in Europe
• Background

• OpenMarket statement
• Handelsblatt 2001-01-10
• The subject matter of the patents is trivial: session ids

Abstract

In particular, the process described in the invention includes client-server sessions over the Internet involving hypertext files. In the hypertext environment, a client views a document transmitted by a content server with a standard program known as the browser. Each hypertext document or page contains links to other hypertext pages which the user may select to traverse. When the user selects a link that is directed to an access-controlled file, the server subjects the request to a secondary server which determines whether the client has an authorization or valid account. Upon such verification, the user is provided with a session identification which allows the user to access to the requested file as well as any other files within the present protection domain.

Prior art

would be cookie convention and encrypted data exchange protocols

• http://l2.espacenet.com/dips/viewer?PN=US5715314&CY=ep&LG=en&DB=EPD
• http://l2.espacenet.com/dips/viewer?PN=US5909492&CY=ep&LG=en&DB=EPD

Situation in Europe

Two of the patents also have also been applied for at the European Patent office:

1. EP0803105
2. EP0803105

Background

This attack was launched against Intershop after it had to restructure its US marketing strategy after huge losses in the US.

Gregory Aharonian writes on this in patents@liberte.aful.org list on Fri Jan 12:

...With regards to Open Market, they have had their patents for a few years, and really haven't done much with them. I suspect they have approached a few companies, and then cut cheap licensing deals when these companies responded back with a fair amount of prior art that could be used to invalidate the patents. Would these companies preferred not to have to spend any monies on such matters? Sure, just like I don't enjoy spending tens of thousands of dollars defending myself from a totally stupid patent. But the monies being spent are probably no more than the monies other companies in other industries have to spend to deal with crappy patents...